


sulfur and snow

by boo98 (butter)



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Accidental Bonding, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Magic, Librarian Jihoon, M/M, Med Student Junhui, Misunderstandings, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-26
Updated: 2018-12-26
Packaged: 2019-09-27 16:41:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17165543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/butter/pseuds/boo98
Summary: Jihoon has a pet fish, bills to pay, and at least seven different half-finished songs sitting in his laptop. He doesn’t have the time to figure out how to break someone else’s accidental curse, especially when it involves him being all but literally tied to a complete stranger. Even if it is a stranger with nice hair and a propensity for holding his hand.





	sulfur and snow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tarantism](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tarantism/gifts).



Jihoon doesn't remember the lights in the library being this bright.

He rolls his face further into the carpet, and the sudden darkness on the other side of his eyelids eases the piercing pain in his temples slightly. He would cup his hands over his eyes to block it out further, but for some reason he doesn't think that would work.

For a moment he wonders if he has a concussion. His stomach rolls at the thought, but it stops before it gets actually nauseating.

Something - a hand - pulls at his arm and the motion sends a track of goose bumps up to his shoulder and down his back, between his shoulder blades. The hand is almost burning hot, but something about it settles the remnants of rocky waves in his gut.

" - be okay?" A voice breaks through the muddled clouds of his thoughts, everything moving a half-second delayed. He can't really grasp a specific thought and focus on it, can only let everything roll over him.

The hand on his arm slides down to his wrist and tugs, gently, until he lets the movement roll his face back away from being pressed into the ground. He keeps his eyes closed, though, because he's pretty sure he'll actually get sick if he opens them.

A different voice responds, coming from above his head, but the words slip away before Jihoon can understand them. He just squeezes his eyes tighter and lets the hand on his wrist gather both of his hands into the other person's grip.

The touch, skin on skin, settles his stomach until it feels almost normal, and he would swear that the light seems to dim from the other side of his closed eyelids.

If Jihoon was a bit more lucid, this fact would make him a good amount more nervous than it does right now.

The hand that's not holding his pushes through his hair before settling a warm palm against his forehead. "There we go. Coming back to earth now?"

Jihoon works his jaw a second before he's able to pull the words out of his throat. "What - what happened?" His voice comes out rusty, shot, like it sounds after a long performance.

That voice above him chuckles, low in the back of the throat, and the hand on his forehead moves to cup carefully over his eyes, blocking the light. It brings an accidental noise of relief out of his throat, and he's grateful that he doesn't really have the brain power yet to be embarrassed about that.

"I hope you get to count this as a work-related injury, for your sake." The voice sounds amused.

"I'm part time," Jihoon mumbles, shifting. The back of his head is sore, like he slammed it onto something, and he realizes slowly that he's been moved to rest his head on someone's leg. "I don't even get sick leave."

The person hums. "Short term disability, maybe."

That strikes Jihoon right in the stomach with panic, and the voice sputters as he tries to heave himself to sit up. "Are you - what? Let me, let me up," he says, and he manages to shake off the hands and right himself. It sends his head spinning, and the other person's hand returns to hold him by the shoulder until he's able to steady himself out.

"Careful," the voice says, as Jihoon finally opens his eyes.

The light is still bad, panging through his temples, but after a moment his eyes focus.

He's still in the library, which is good, at least. They're on the floor in one of the back rooms where the interlibrary loans get processed, although none of the usual people who work back here are anywhere in sight. Instead it's just Jihoon, sitting on the ground with a piercing headache and a strange heaviness in the back of his throat, and -

This other person.

"Feeling better?" The person asks, and his hand slides down from Jihoon’s shoulder to squeeze his wrist.

Jihoon blinks. The person isn't familiar, not really. If Jihoon focused he could maybe put at least a department to the face, the university isn't _that_ big, but he doesn't really know him. He has short black hair that flops just a bit over his forehead and a sharp nose that has Jihoon faintly wondering about surgical charms that he's heard about over the years. He's looking at Jihoon with lowered eyebrows, concerned, and he's still gripping his arm.

"What happened?" Jihoon asks again, instead of any of the other questions that are spinning slowly through the fog of his head.

The man's mouth tilts a degree and he tips his head along with it, as if in thought. "What's the last thing you remember?"

"What?"

"Just, think. Don't force it," the man says. "Let it come back to you."

These back offices in the library are always fairly quiet, and right now they seem to sink even more silent as Jihoon frowns, focuses, and watches the other man's eyes dart across his face.

It's a Friday - or, at least, it was. He only works a half day on Fridays, so he was at the university library by eight in the morning. It had been bitterly cold that morning, and the library in contrast had seemed almost too warm.

The students were all focused on the last remnants of final exams, which meant that the general reading room was heavy with stress. There hadn't been that many questions for him, though, since most people were just studying, and he'd been able to bang out a few emails to his regular families who booked extra practice over the holidays before he'd even gotten one.

It had been a med student - Jihoon remembers that much, because he'd had to look up a few things on the library resource website that were graduate-level. He doesn't remember the question, or if he'd been able to answer it, because out of nowhere there had been a sudden flash of light and bang of sound, and now...

"Oh." Jihoon blinks, hard, and looks back up at the man. "That was you. You asked a question, right?"

The man's face brightens, and it's a little crazy how much it instantly makes him look years younger. "You remember that much! Good, I was worried you'd taken that fall harder than that."

"I did fall, then?" Jihoon touches the tender back of his head lightly with his free hand. For some reason, he doesn't feel like shaking off the man's hand on his other wrist just yet. "What was - was that a spell?"  
"Not really a good one, but, yeah." The man's mouth twists in a frown, and he looks worried all over again. "Stray practice charm from some of the students. They're probably still getting chewed out by the librarians for doing it in public and not one of the practice rooms. It went a little wild, anyways, and you took it pretty hard."

"Feels like it." Jihoon drops his hand back down. "What'd the spell do? You look alright."

"Ah..." The man shrugs tentatively. "I managed to stay conscious, so I got out of it with no bruises at least. The librarian at circulation let me bring you back here, to get away from all the noise."

"That's surprising." Jihoon shrugs when the man looks at him. "Circulation's pretty famously grumpy. Especially this time of year when they have to schedule 24 hour shifts."

The man snorts. "I guess they were too stunned by your unconscious body to fight me on that."

"Hah." Jihoon huffs out the laugh with a breath. "You didn't say what the spell did, though."

His stomach sinks further when the man kind of shrinks back at that. "Right," he says. "Um. So, the original spell was a communication one, I think. Like a variant on an auto-translator, you know?"

"Sure." Jihoon isn't magic, the most he can usually pull off is a quick cleaning charm just to get the dust off of his bookshelves at home, but he knows enough about magic from this job to make things work. "I may not be a magic user, but even I know that those don't usually result in half the recipients being half-concussed."

The man's eyebrows shoot up. "Do you feel concussed?" He grips Jihoon's wrist tighter. "I should have thought of that, oh no. Do you, I can do a diagnostic charm, let me - "

"No, um, I think it's fine. Just sore." Jihoon can't pinpoint why, but there's a sudden spike of anxiety in his chest. "You said the original charm was a translator. It got twisted?"

"Yeah. It was definitely more than a translator by the time it hit us."

"Right." Jihoon swallows thickly, suddenly feeling like he could kill for a glass of water. "What did it do?"

The man mimics his swallow. Jihoon's eyes track the movement in his throat before he can think not to. "It might be easier to show you," he says, and then promptly pinches his eyebrows together. "Sorry in advance. This isn't fun."

Then, he lets go of Jihoon's wrist.

The pain isn't immediate but his headache, which had lessened considerably since he woke up, comes sinking back into his temples and behind his eyes. His stomach twists as he takes a second to try and remember if he's eaten anything that day, and he feels a cold sweat break out on the back of his neck.

More than any of those things, though, he has the sudden sense of something like a heavy rock land in the pit of his stomach. It feels icy cold, and as he sits there he feels the chill sink into his veins and out towards his fingertips.

"What... is that?" Jihoon says before he can filter it, and when he looks up from his hands to look at the other man he can tell he feels it too. He's wincing, tendons in his neck more pronounced that before, and he has his hands curled into fists in his lap.

"That's a pretty strong spell, done pretty much entirely wrong." The man lets out a breath and straightens his fingers out one by one, as if by force. Jihoon's fingers are almost frosted over now. "I... something with the spell corrupted itself. It warped the intent for clear communication and... I don't know. This happened."

"It kind of sucks."

The man huffs out a laugh, which is at odds with the rapidly paling cast to his face. "Yeah." His hands twitch. "I, um. I think if we don't hold contact the symptoms increase."

"Oh." Most of Jihoon's friends would agree with the fact that he isn't exactly big on physical contact, and even more so with a complete stranger. Still, his headache is increasing to the point where he almost can't hold his eyes open, so he tentatively reaches a hand out.

The man takes it immediately, and Jihoon watches with some detached academic interest as the red slowly comes back to his cheeks. The second their skin touches his headache eases, and warmth slowly works its way into his extremities. Jihoon is not the biggest fan of this.

Then, even more quickly, the red comes back to the man's ears, and the man's shoulders inch up to meet them. "Uh. I'm Wen Junhui."

Jihoon's brain is still catching back up to working properly, now that they're holding hands and his stomach doesn't feel like it's going to crack with that strange, empty chill. It's probably good, because in a normal situation he might laugh at this. "Oh. Hi. I'm Lee Jihoon."

"Hi." The man - Junhui - looks abashed, and his palm is practically steaming in Jihoon's grip. "So. I figure that we might want to look into this whole thing. Unless you want to just wait it out and see if the spell has a time limit?"

"Either that or it ends up going even more unstable and starts doing something worse," Jihoon says without thinking, and Junhui doesn't hide his slight wince. "No, um. That makes sense. I, uh, don't really know much about spellcasting."

"I'm not exactly an expert on things like this," Junhui admits. He's threaded their fingers together, easy as anything, and doesn't seem to notice the way that movement sends Jihoon's spine straight. "I'm studying surgical magic. It's a little more concrete than charm work."

"Right." Jihoon purses his mouth, thinking, and casts a quick look around the room. They're still sitting on the floor, which is fine because Jihoon still doesn't have complete confidence in his knees holding his weight. The clock reads just after three in the afternoon, which means that he's definitely been out for a few hours, at least. "You have any friends in the charm department, maybe?"

"Not really." Junhui frowns too. "I did my undergrad in China, so most of the people I know here are med students too."

"You're from China?" Jihoon asks, then shakes his head when Junhui nods and opens his mouth to answer. "Never mind, that's great, we need to get moving, though."

Junhui's mouth closes with a click before he replies. "We do?"

"It's a Friday. Not to mention there's only a week before half the school leaves for the winter break." Jihoon uses his free hand to check his watch, as though he doesn't trust the clock on the wall to be right. "A lot of offices are closing soon. We need to find someone who knows charms."

Junhui hums in agreement but something lights up in the back of Jihoon's mind, and he frowns to think before he's scrambling to his feet.

"I have an idea." Jihoon gets his feet underneath him and feels mostly stable, and helps pull Junhui up without thinking about it. He's taller than he seemed on the floor, and Jihoon's thoughts skip for a second before continuing on track. "We should hurry, though, I know he heads out early."

"Okay," Junhui stammers, adjusting his grip on Jihoon's hand as he's pulled out from the office and down the back hallway that connects the offices with the main floor of the library. "Where are we going?"

"That's a good question, actually." Jihoon glances over his shoulder at Junhui, who looks a little shell-shocked but simultaneously amused. His button-up is wrinkled, and Jihoon feels weirdly guilty about that. "Do you know where the undergrad student activity office is?"

 

They end up getting to the student activities office about thirty minutes later. It isn't a long walk across the campus, but Jihoon has to spend a good ten minutes convincing over-concerned librarians that no, he isn't going to keel over again, and yes, he definitely knew Junhui before today and it's not weird that they're holding hands.

Jihoon also spends the remaining twenty minute walk trying to not give away the fact that he has to hustle a little bit to keep up with Junhui's legs.

Luckily, when they finally get to the office Jihoon finds the person he was looking for right at the front desk, sensible sweater and pointed half-elf ears and all. He's surrounded by candy canes and loose ribbon, which isn't the biggest surprise.

"Hi Josh," Jihoon says as he pushes through the door, Junhui trailing behind him. "Those for your residents?"

Joshua looks up with an almost automatic grin, lighting up when he sees them. "For the end of finals! Please take a candy cane, though, oh my god I have so many." He pauses a second when he sees Junhui, and Jihoon's stomach sinks a degree when he recognizes the calculating tilt to Josh's head. "Hello there."

"Hi." Junhui wiggles his free hand at Joshua, grin widening. "Josh?"

"That's me." Josh weaves his hands together and props his chin on them, assessing. "And you are?”

“Junhui,” Jihoon interrupts. He shifts his grip on Junhui’s hand to hold his wrist instead. It feels safer, for some reason, especially against the knowing glint in Joshua’s eyes. His friends really suck sometimes. “You’re a charms student.”

That seems to take Joshua by surprise, as he straightens up in his seat. “That’s what I hear. Since when do you care about magic study?”

“Since it started affecting me personally.” Jihoon can feel the heat of Junhui’s stare on the side of his face, but he ignores it the best he can. “Do you know anything about connection charms?”

“Connection?” Josh eyes the both of them again, although his expression shifts into something more serious. “What sort of connection?”

Jihoon holds up the wrist that he’s holding and waves it a little bit. “Encourages physical contact. Causes headaches and nausea if we're not touching. Um," he trails off, glancing at Junhui.

"There might be some mental connection too," Junhui adds, avoiding eye contact and looking towards Josh instead. His wrist tenses under Jihoon's grip, though, and he accidentally tightens it a bit too much at that.

"Mental connection?"

"Oh boy," Josh says. "I assume it was an accident?"

"Stray spell went wrong," Junhui replies. "It got twisted somewhere along the way. Jihoon got knocked out for a little bit."

"Well that's a bad sign." Joshua stands up and leans over the desk counter, pushing candy canes out of the way. "Mind if I take a look?"

Junhui shakes his head and they prop their joined hands on the counter. "What do you specialize in?"

"Psychological charms," Josh replies, distracted already as he presses a hand on either side of theirs. "Emotional stabilizing, mental clarity, that kind of thing. Now shush."

Jihoon swallows, nervously, as Josh closes his eyes. Charm workers each have their own way of reading magic, and it's pretty common for it to be nonvocal, but all it does is leave the three of them in a still silence. The only noise is the faint sound of the music station that Josh has on in the background, and Jihoon's pretty sure he can hear his own heart beat in his temple.

Shifting next to him brings his attention back and up to Junhui, who shrugs a little at him before grinning. It's a nice smile, kind of lopsided, but he really is kind of strikingly too-handsome.

His stomach swings a little, but he quickly packs that up and puts that away on a shelf. He has way too much going on right now.

Joshua's fingertips that are pressing against the back of his hand tingle for a brief second, and then he releases their hands to just sit on the counter in the middle of all of them.

"That's a mixed up mess of a spell you got there," Joshua says after a beat. If Jihoon hadn't known him for so long he would have missed the concerned note in his voice. As it was he picked it out immediately, along with the tick in his jaw when he clenched it too hard. "It's like something was wrong with it upon arrival. I can tell it was a translation spell to begin with, but then it's like... it all twists."

He props his elbows on the counter and levels a look at Jihoon. "How serious are these distance symptoms we're talking about?"

"Uh." Jihoon glances down at his and Junhui's hands, hesitant. "I don't know, um. They're really not fun."

"Thanks for your specificity." Joshua winks at him, to make sure he doesn't take it seriously, but turns solemn again quickly. "Would you mine testing it out?"

"I'd really rather not."

"Right, but I'd really like to figure out whether you'll just die on the spot if you two get knocked apart on the subway for a minute."

Jihoon deflates. "Fine." He glances up at Junhui, but his expression is closed off. "Do you mind? Just trying?"

Junhui's mouth twists to a frown as he eyes Joshua before he looks back down at Jihoon. Something softens, there, just a bit, and he finally nods. "Just trying."

He lets go.

After holding hands for the walk to the student activities office and having time to clear his head, the sudden rush of fogginess when Junhui pulls his hand away is a shock to his system. Jihoon swallows back a wave of sickness and grips the edge of the counter as his knees go weak.

He'd panic and grab back onto Junhui if he wasn't confident in Josh's ability to tell when things were going to far. As it is, he has to screw his eyes shut after about a minute of tense silence. The lights hurt, and his vision was starting to swim at the edges.

He loses track of time a little bit after he closes his eyes. He's never been much of a magic user, so he never developed the sense of feeling as magic worked its way through his system, but he thinks he can sense the way the charm pulses anxiously at his temples, beating against his ribs.

There's also the slowly growing sense of something in the back of his mind. It slips away when he tries to grab it, hides back into the shadowy corners of his brain, but there's something there that he feels is important. Something he's missing. Whatever it is, he feels like he can see it dart from one side of his mind to the other in a metallic flash.

Just as a slow wash of frost is making its way down his spine, as he can feel his knuckles going white and tough as he tries to cling to the counter, a warm palm grips tight to his wrist and everything melts away.

Jihoon's breath leaves him in a relieved rush and he sags to the side before he can think about it. Junhui's other arm wraps around his waist before he can even register it's happening, and Jihoon's head is so misty still that he just leans into his side almost automatically.

Josh's voice is the first thing he hears as he comes back to himself.

"About ten minutes," he's saying, and when Jihoon opens his eyes he swallows at the pinched look between Josh's brows. "That's pretty... serious."

"We haven't really tried long distances, too," Junhui replies. He doesn't sound as shaky as Jihoon imagines his voice would come out, but when Jihoon chances a look up at him his face is that same, almost bone-pale shade as earlier. His grip tightens on Jihoon's wrist, just on the edge of uncomfortable, but he doesn't say anything. "I'm worried that things would get even worse if we were farther than just a few feet from each other."

Joshua looks even more grim at that. "That's probably a good hunch." He sighs and picks up a stray candy cane, snapping the straight edge off through the wrapper and unwrapping it. "Here," he says, and offers it out to Junhui, who takes it, surprised. "You look like you're about to keel over with fever. It's not really medicine, but it'll help."

Junhui frowns but obediently pops the candy into his mouth. Now that Jihoon looks again he can see where his hair is slightly damp at his temples, and the arm around his waist feels almost like a brand against his back, the heat sinking through his shirt. "Thanks."

"What you two need is a curse breaker."

Jihoon stiffens. "Curse? This isn't a curse, is it?"

"Not originally." Josh breaks off another piece of candy cane and offers it to Jihoon, but he shakes his head. "It's acting more like a curse than a charm now, though. Something about you two, or the spell casting situation, or the caster themselves - I don't know what it was, but it twisted the original charm into what it's doing now. A normal charm worker doesn't really have the background in untwisting that kind of thing," he explains, sticking the piece of candy cane into his mouth like a cigarette. "Curse breaker, though. That's like their middle name."

"So we need a curse breaker," Jihoon repeats. "Happen to have any recommendations? Preferably someone who'll work pro bono?"

Josh snorts around the candy. "A few of my residents are majors, but that's if you trust a nineteen year old who spent the last few months learning just how much vodka they can handle messing around in your brain."

"That's a solid no."

"I might know someone," Junhui speaks up, wilting a little when the other two quickly turn their attention to him. "I'll have to call and see if he's still in town, though. And he might not be available for a little bit."

"Well, I'd recommend asking anyways." Josh sits back down in his chair, picking up another candy cane and resuming tying ribbons around it. "That thing looks unstable. I'd worry that it might break down further over time."

"Great. That sounds great." Jihoon rubs his face with one hand and just kind of keeps it there. Maybe if he refuses to acknowledge that this is his life, it'll stop being his life. "You can't do anything to help it?"

Joshua makes an uncertain hum in the back of his throat. "I'm kind of worried I'll throw things even more off kilter if I try. I would just suggest keeping in contact as much as possible. Continued exposure to the negative effects may be worsening the spell itself."

"Sounds about right," Jihoon says into his palm. "Thanks, Josh."

"Oh, I'm always here to listen when my friends' lives turn into a weird soap opera episode." Josh arches an eyebrow at them over his massive pile of candy canes. "Just be lucky you don't have any final exams to be worrying about, in the middle of all this."

Jihoon feels more than hears the way Junhui swallows at that, with how their sides are still pressed together.

He looks up at Junhui sharply. "Wait. You don't have exams, right?"

Junhui looks almost as pale as he did after they came off ten minutes of no contact, and he gives Jihoon a shaky kind of grin. "Um. Just one." When Jihoon gives him an expressionless silence in lieu of a response Junhui gulps again. "And a practical."

 

Jihoon tries not to feel like a particularly intelligent pet dog, with the way that he has to kind of trail behind Junhui around his apartment, hooked together by Junhui's fingers.

It's a nice apartment, for a grad student living in the city. A bit of a mess, though, he thinks as he steps over a pile of books that have spilled over out of the tower they must have once been sitting in. The mess means that there's lots of stuff to look around at, though, instead of trying to maintain conversation.

They had left the office to Joshua's never ending quest to make bad and mostly useless resident gifts, and had walked about twenty feet before Jihoon ground to a halt.

"What do we do about sleeping?" he asked, and watched with interest the way Junhui took a moment to process every implication of that question.

After a silence, wherein Jihoon noticed that Junhui's hair was too nice for someone who was going to go into a career path where they had to cover it up all the time, Junhui shrugged. "My apartment's just a ten minute walk away."

"Mine is just one bus stop," Jihoon retorted, stubbornness rising. "And I have a fish to feed."

"I don't have any roommates."

"I have chicken in the fridge that needs to be cooked."

"I have a queen sized bed."

The walk to Junhui's took twelve minutes. Jihoon blamed it entirely on him being wrong about the length, and not on the disparity in stride.

Now, Junhui seems to have mostly given up on the informal tour he had started out giving when they first got to his place, and is just puttering around trying to collect things that he seems to think Jihoon might need at some point. For a guy who fought so hard to get to stay at his own place even under the throes of some menacing charm-curse, he's turned strangely guilt-ridden at the fact that Jihoon doesn't have any of his stuff.

"What's the deal with this exam you have, anyways?" Jihoon asks finally, mostly to break the pattern of silence, only interspersed with occasional questions about whether he needs a sweater, or a hair brush. "How long are we going to have to be separated?"

"The written portion is two hours," Junhui says, carefully. "Then a twenty minute break, and then the practical. There's another hour scheduled for that, but it might be over sooner, depending." He replaces the TV remote onto its shelf, after offering it hesitantly to Jihoon, and turns to face him fully. "I might be able to ask if I can reschedule."

He doesn't sound very certain about that, and Jihoon doesn't blame him. "You really think they'd let a third year med student push his exam back literally days before its scheduled? What if this thing," he shakes their joined hands, which hang between them, "What if it's not over in a week? Or a month?"

Junhui shrugs, jaw stiffening. "They won't let you in the exam room, much less let you just hold my hand the whole time."

"We could tell them, you know. Tell the university about this whole thing and pull that card to request rescheduling?"

Junhui goes vaguely green at the gills at that. "I thought about that, but, um. Technically, I think this spell would fall under the same category as things like telepathy, and mental links."

"So?"

"So," Junhui hedges, swinging their hands back and forth between them like he's forgotten it's not a normal thing to be holding hands with a complete stranger, basically. "There's, um. Some pretty strict rules in the med school for testing conditions. And, um. Enrollment conditions."

That... doesn't sound great. "What kind of rules?"

"Any spell that has anything to do with mental connections is banned. It increases the risk of collusion and cheating." Junhui pushes his hair back with his free hand and makes a pretty sad attempt at a sheepish grin. "Think of it like a drug test. The second they test you positive for one of those family of spells you're not allowed to attend classes or anything for at least six months after the spell is no longer in effect."

"Oh." Jihoon frowns, watching the sick tinge to Junhui's expression deepen. "I guess that'd be a pretty big issue, huh."

"I really need to graduate on time." Junhui looks down at the wood panel flooring and then back up at Jihoon, and the sincerity in his expression knocks him in the chest. "My family's expecting it, and you rack up enough debt in med school as it is. I can't just, just, interrupt everything. And if the spell really takes that long to disable then how long would I actually be out of commission?"

Junhui swallows and loosens his grip on Jihoon's fingers, as if he hadn't noticed until now that he was clutching them tighter and tighter as he spoke. "I'm sorry, I just. I really can't risk that."

Something in that shelf in Jihoon's chest rattled, and he let out a breath before speaking. "I understand. No, um, that makes sense." He rubs his own forehead and looks away from the suddenly, purely grateful look on Junhui's face. "Okay. Okay, we'll just figure out a plan B then."

"I think we may be a little past plan B," Junhui says after a pause, carefully gauging Jihoon's expression. "We might be closer to G."

"Well," Jihoon replies, and pointedly relaxes his shoulders so they don't feel quite so stiff with nerves. "If we start getting towards S or T we can start really worrying, right?"

Junhui's face goes suddenly open, like a curtain dropping, and the sincerity in his smile now sends that same rattling thing in Jihoon's chest completely falling to crash to the ground. "Right."

Something about seeing Junhui's panic at the thought of losing time for his degree must break down a layer of awkwardness, something that wasn't already broken down by the handholding that Jihoon's rapidly getting used to, because it's easier after that to follow Junhui around. Jihoon pokes through a few of his cookbooks, most of them in Chinese that he can only read a character every twenty words, while Junhui hums and makes dinner.

"What got you interested in surgical magic?" Jihoon asks after they eat and find seats on Junhui's couch. It's low but comfortable enough, and they wiggle a little bit until they figure out a position where their ankles can brush against each other. "That's a pretty specific focus."

Junhui shrugs and taps a few things on his phone. "I've always preferred more physical magic. It's easier for me than the metaphysical. That's why I've always been shit at charms," he jokes, grinning over his phone at Jihoon.

"Hah," Jihoon says, very intelligently. "I've never been good at any magic, so you're already leagues ahead of me."

"Oh! Are you inert?" Junhui asks. From most people it would be rude to ask that so outright, but something about Junhui's voice, the tilt of his head, and the way the thin skin that stretches across his ankle bone burns against Jihoon's makes it okay.

"Mostly." Jihoon is careful to shift his position just enough that he pulls one leg in to wrap his arms around, leaving the other one stretched across the middle of the couch. "I can do some little spells, just basic stuff. It's never really interested me, anyways."

"You work at a magic user university, though."

"That's just been kind of a side job." Jihoon wiggles his hand. "To help pay the bills. Plus, the most that the library usually requires of research assistants is easy organizational and cleaning spells, so it's never been an issue."

"Makes sense." Junhui picks at the label of the water bottle he'd had with dinner. "What's your main job, then? I assume not just sitting around a bunch of dusty books?"

"Hey, the books are interesting sometimes. One tried to eat me a few weeks ago." Jihoon shakes his head and grins tentatively. "No, um. I'm a voice teacher. And, uh, producer. Aspiring producer, maybe."

"You work with music, then!" Junhui straightens up, interested, and accidentally loses contact with Jihoon's ankle before quickly righting himself. "That's so cool, though! You write songs?"

"Sure, but you're not really a producer until you're also selling songs," Jihoon jokes dryly. "I mostly just teach voice to high school kids, or college students who want extra attention out of class. A lot of solo sessions. It's not really enough to live off of, hence the day job."

"Still, though." Junhui settles back a little but is still staring at Jihoon like he hung the moon. "That's amazing, to be chasing the thing you're so passionate about."

The single-minded focus sends blood rushing to Jihoon's ears, and he rubs one of them while simultaneously hoping that it doesn't draw attention to it. "Um, thanks. That's how I know Josh, actually," he says, mostly as a attempted distraction tactic. "He and I were in the same classical guitar class, like, ages ago."

"Oh, wow." Junhui's eyes, if possible, go even bigger and brighter at that. "You need to play for me sometime, then!"

Jihoon huffs out another laugh, this one ringing more true in the room around them. "Maybe when this whole thing is over and I can use both hands again, sure."

The reminder of the spell settles around them slowly like a layer of snow, and after a moment Junhui laughs, tense all over again, and turns away.

They lapse into silence, watching the travel show that Junhui eventually forced Jihoon to pick as a gesture of hospitality. Jihoon tries to focus on it, or at least appear to, but his eyes keep wandering around the room. If Junhui notices he doesn't seem put off by it, so Jihoon lets himself inspect things.

The shelf against the wall near the TV is full of books, without any real attempt at sorting, or at least none he can tell. The edges of the shelves are crammed with small statues, most of them gleaming like dull metal but some shiny like new steel. A few half-melted candles litter the coffee table in the middle of the room, along with an almost empty box of cigarettes that looks like someone stepped on it and four different lighters.

The place is cozy, in a very, very lived in way, and it's heated way higher than Jihoon's apartment is. He must fall asleep at some point, because the next thing he knows it's suddenly darker than it was before, the TV is off, and Junhui has moved to wrap his hand loosely around Jihoon's ankle, just below the cuff of his jeans.

"Bed?" he asks, grin tipping up on one side when Jihoon blinks awake and squints at him. "We've got a busy day of trying to hack our curse tomorrow, I think."

Jihoon peers at him, groggy, before the pieces fall back in place and he groans into his hands. "I think so too. Okay, let's get this over with."

Changing for bed - the whole thing is weird, is the thing. He thinks this must be what people in crises experience, though, with the sudden restructuring of their worldview, because he feels like they adjust pretty quickly to the new normal that is Jihoon pressing two fingertips to Junhui's side as he changes his shirt.

Junhui lends him a t-shirt and sweatpants, too, and very kindly pretends to not snort when Jihoon has to roll them up in order to not trip over himself.

Junhui's bedroom is an even more condensed version of the mess out in the main living room, Jihoon finds, as he hangs off of Junhui's side and leaves him with both hands to remake his bed. Almost every flat surface is covered in things; books, action figure-type toys, what looks like just plain old rocks in one corner of his desk.

Still, it's not messy, not exactly. There's some kind of order to everything, and it's all clean, even for how cluttered it looks at first. Jihoon picks up a particularly normal looking rock at one point and gets about two seconds to look at it before Junhui snags it out of his hands and slams it, lightly, back onto the desk.

"It's, um. Important heirloom," Junhui stutters out when Jihoon startles and looks up at him. "Sorry."

"It's okay, uh. I won't touch anything."

"Sorry," Junhui says again, but the assurance seems to relax him a bit. "Here, we can sleep now."

Sleeping is a whole other thing.

There's a brief stand off about which side of the bed to take, before Jihoon forces Junhui to just pick one, oh my god, I want to go to sleep. They try holding hands loosely, but that means they both have to sleep on their backs, and it lasts a tense ten minutes before Jihoon lets out a sigh and asks to try something else.

"Okay," Junhui says, and rolls onto his side to face Jihoon. "Don't push me off the bed though, okay?"

"I won't ever guarantee that," Jihoon responds. Even in the dark he feels like he can see the glint of Junhui's eyes. "But I'll do my best."

Junhui snorts and, after a silent moment where there's nothing but pitch black and shifting on sheets, a heavy arm slings over where Jihoon's arms are folded very nervously on his stomach.

"If we just keep our arms like this," he mumbles into his pillow, as Jihoon lets himself get gently manhandled onto his opposite side and Junhui tucks his arm underneath Jihoon's. "We should be okay."

Junhui lets out a breath, and the air blows past the hair on the back of Jihoon's neck. "I have a feeling that I'll wake up pretty quickly if we lose contact, anyways."

"Let's hope so," Jihoon mutters, but very gamely lets Junhui adjust their position until it's comfortable. "To plan H, then."

The heat of the room and of Junhui's arm over him already has him sinking back into sleep, but he still hears the huff of laughter against his neck. "To plan H."

 

Jihoon sleeps better than he thought he would, that night. He usually hates sharing a bed with anyone - his last boyfriend had completely given up his initial dreams of cuddling, because Jihoon always ended up entirely cocooned in his blankets.

Between how warm Junhui seems to keep his apartment and the way he naturally runs about as hot as a tea kettle, though, Jihoon pretty much sleeps through the night. He wakes up slowly when the bed moves, and lets himself roll over naturally when Junhui’s arm slides off him and moves to just lightly touch the back of his neck.

The room is lit with the thin winter sunlight coming through the window, so Jihoon has to squint a little against it to look up at Junhui.

Junhui taps a few things into his phone with his free hand, awkwardly, and glances down at Jihoon. “Hey,” he says, smiling. “No awful accidents, it looks like.”

“That’s good,” Jihoon says, voice sleep-rough as he rubs his eyes. “Thanks, um. For letting me stay over.”

“‘Course.” Junhui says, good-naturedly, and turns back to his phone. “The real fun will be trying to shower.”

There’s a long stretch of silence, and when Junhui looks back down to see Jihoon’s expression he bursts out laughing.

Jihoon makes the express decision, one fingertip touching Junhui’s outstretched arm while he tests the water, not to linger too long on the whole shower thing.

Regardless.

About an hour later, an hour that Jihoon blocks out almost as soon as it happens, finds the two of them back on Junhui’s couch.

Junhui’s phone has been blowing up since last night, and after Jihoon throws it a few curious glances he blinks up and grins. “Sorry,” he says, and flips the phone around to show Jihoon the messaging screen he’s on. “Trying to get in touch with my curse breaker friend. He’s flying out of town for the new year, but I managed to catch him just in time.”

“Oh, wow, that’s lucky.”

“Mm-hm.” Junhui grins at something on his phone and taps out a few more letters before clicking it off and swinging his arm over the back of the couch. “He says he’ll swing by in a few hours. Enough time for us to try a few things out.”

Jihoon blinks at Junhui, wondering briefly if the coffee he made for him is actually caffeinated because his brain seems to be moving slow, before that clicks. “Oh. Like, seeing how long we can stay apart?”

“Yeah. We should probably see if there’s anything we can do to lengthen that time.” Junhui huffs and stretches his legs across the couch a few inches more, and Jihoon follows the movement with his bare ankle. “I’m really sorry. If I didn’t have this exam this might be a lot easier.”

“It wasn’t exactly going to be fun, no matter what.” Jihoon shrugs. “Don’t worry too much about it. We just have to figure out a way to make sure you can actually take that test without passing out in the middle of it.”

“That’d be nice, yeah.” Junhui stretches his arms up, above his head. Jihoon hears his spine crack in a few places, and looks away from the strip of skin that shows when his shirt rides up his stomach at the movement. “Alright. Test time.”

The first thing they do is make sure they’re sitting down when they break contact.

“I really don’t feel like banging my head on something if I pass out. Again.” Jihoon says, and Junhui agrees quickly.

“Okay.” Jihoon looks down at where there ankles touch, swallowing nerves away already. “Ready to go?”

“Let’s do it.” Junhui pulls his foot back in to himself, settles against the couch arm, and turns on his phone timer.

Jihoon braces himself for the sudden rush of pain, and his stomach actually jumps a bit when it doesn’t come. “Oh.”

It’s - it’s not that nothing happens. That icy feeling in his gut is there pretty immediately, although it just feels kind of like he swallowed an ice cube, and not like something that emanates out through his limbs.

His head actually feels fine, and when he looks up at Junhui the other man is blinking, surprised, at him.

“It’s… not as bad,” Junhui says, crossing his feet carefully underneath him. “You okay?”

“Mostly.” Jihoon concentrates on that cold feeling, and after maybe a minute he can feel the start of a headache. “It’s coming, but slower.”

“Right. Same.” Junhui tips his head to one side, then the other, as if to stretch his neck. “Okay, yeah, there’s that fever coming.”

“You get feverish?”

“Oh, like, so bad.” He scruffs a hand through his hair, which is still slightly damp from the shower. “It’s like there’s a fire right underneath my skin.”

“I get the opposite. It’s like,” Jihoon continues, when Junhui looks curious, “it’s like I swallowed a bunch of ice, or something. And then that turns into frostbite, almost.”

He winces, then, when the headache turns from a general pound to something more piercing behind his eyes. “It’s getting worse, though.”

“Yeah.” Junhui looks pained, and Jihoon can see the sweat at his temples now. “Let’s - are you okay to see how long we can go, still?”

“Sure, yeah, we need to.”

The silence stretches in, and Jihoon isn’t sure how long it takes before his fingers start going numb. He presses them underneath his thighs and tries to go as long as he can without closing his eyes, but after a little while he just has to - the light is too much, all of a sudden.

Junhui makes a concerned noise under his throat, and Jihoon shakes his head in response. He can go a bit longer. He has to try.

He tries to not focus on the ice, or the headache. His stomach hasn’t gone sick yet, so he still has some time.

As he tries to cast about for something to distract him from the pain, that feeling feeling in the back of his mind from yesterday comes back. He tries to grab it quickly.

He doesn’t really have the words for it. If he was more magic, he might, but as it is it just feels like something shivery, lightning-fast against the corners of his thoughts. When he focuses harder on it he can almost feel body heat coming off of it, if that was possible.

It seems to warm his ribs either way, which is… nice. If confusing.

Just when he thinks he has a grip on it it darts away, and after the second or third time Jihoon lets out a pained breath and gives up. His stomach flips, and his thoughts start to grow slow, as if they’re freezing over.

Again, Junhui’s the first to break. Jihoon would be lying if he wasn’t relieved, though, when those burning fingers wrap back around his wrist.

He hears the beep of Junhui turning the timer off, and waits a few seconds before opening his eyes.

Junhui looks pale when his vision focuses, but he’s actually smiling faintly. “Thirty minutes,” he says when he sees Jihoon looking at him. “We could only do ten yesterday. I wonder why it’s getting easier?”

“Is it wearing off?”

“I don’t know… it still feels, like, awful when it gets to that certain point. It’s like we’re building up a tolerance to it.”

Jihoon frowns, slipping his hands out from under his legs and carefully rubbing feeling back into his fingers without shaking off Junhui’s grip. “I wonder how it works. If we keep going at this rate, we may be able to stretch past an hour by the time your exam happens, but we’ll need what? Three hours?”

“Well,” Junhui says, head tilting as he thinks. “Two hours at first, then another hour. We’ll have some time in between, though.”

“Do you think that’s enough to recover, though?”

Junhui shrugs, and Jihoon wonders briefly how he can look so calm about this whole thing when Jihoon still feels a little like if he thinks about the situation for too long he’ll shake completely apart. “It’ll have to be enough.”

They try a few more things as they wait for Junhui’s friend to show up.

First, they figure out that they can’t separate again right after doing it for as long as they just did. Jihoon tries to let go, and his vision closes in on itself in about twenty seconds before he grabs back onto Junhui. Junhui, for his part, has to tow Jihoon into the kitchen so he can gulp ice water for a few minutes right after that attempt.

Needless to say, it didn’t go well.

Distance doesn’t really do much to affect the connection, or at least not within the bounds of Junhui’s single apartment. Jihoon stays pressed up against his closed front door after they build up a bit more tolerance and lets Junhui take slow steps away from him, but even when he’s all the way in the corner of his bathroom on the other side of the apartment his headache just increases at a steady pace.

They decide to stop experimenting for now when Jihoon almost falls over and into one of Junhui’s crowded bookshelves, though.

Junhui’s curse breaker friend shows up close to noon, and at first Jihoon thinks that it’s someone else entirely, it has to be.

“Minghao!” Junhui yells loud enough for the entire apartment building to hear when he opens the door, and Jihoon hangs back awkwardly, one hand to Junhui’s elbow, as Junhui hugs the guy standing there with his free arm. He shouts something else in Mandarin, and the guy who’s currently buried in a pile of enthusiastic med student replies dryly before he pulls away.

“You’re the unlucky dude who got bonded to this guy, huh?” Minghao, apparently, asks Jihoon as he pushes Junhui to arms length. He’s got a sharp chin and smart eyes, and a pair of gold-rimmed glasses without lenses in them. He looks utterly unimpressed with the whole situation.

“Apparently,” Jihoon responds, raising his eyebrows at Junhui’s betrayed glance.

Minghao snorts, nods, and steps forward so he can close the door behind himself. “Cool. Let’s see what I can do, my flight leaves at, like, five.”

Jihoon lets himself get herded along with Junhui to the kitchen counter, where they watch Minghao dump his winter coat onto a spare stool before pouring himself a glass of water.

They must be close - Minghao moves easily, comfortably, even around the chaos of all of Junhui’s things. Junhui doesn’t even snap when Minghao pushes a tilting pile of books out of the way as he lines up three glasses of water.

Jihoon tries not to feel weird about that.

“Okay,” Minghao speaks up finally, shifting from foot to foot across the counter from them. “Each of you touch one of the glasses on the end. Just one finger.”

Junhui follows easily enough, and Jihoon does the same after a moment. Minghao has the three glasses touching, the water levels in each even.

Jihoon startles when Minghao touches the glass in the middle and the water in each glass freezes over.

“Give me a few minutes,” Minghao mumbles, already leaning over the counter to peer into the cups. “Junhui, no funny business.”

Junhui snorts at Jihoon’s side, and Jihoon definitely doesn’t wish he was in on whatever inside joke that is.

The water in the glasses is just barely frozen over, weaving patterns into threaded white spiderwebs through clear ice. Minghao studies the surface of each glass, brow furrowed over his pointless glasses, and Jihoon tries not to squeeze Junhui’s hand too hard in anticipation.

It’s probably only five minutes, but it feels like hours before Minghao nods to himself and looks back up at them. “You can let go, now.”

They both pull back their hands and the water in the cups thaws almost instantly. Junhui’s even steams, a little.

“Well.” Minghao pushes his sleeves back to his elbows and takes the cups to dump the water into the sink. “That’s one of the most messed up spells I’ve seen in ages. I’m amazed it actually did anything at all.”

“That doesn’t sound really reassuring,” Jihoon mutters, and he can feel his cheeks redden when Junhui snorts and squeezes his hand.

Minghao shoots Jihoon an amused look. “It actually might be good news. A spell has to be constructed really well to be long-lasting, much less permanent. If this is already half-broken, it may wear off quicker.” He props the glasses in Junhui’s drying tray and wanders over to poke through his fridge.

“Really? That’s good!” Junhui shakes Jihoon’s hand, and looks at him with wide, bright eyes. “Right?”  
“Maybe.” Minghao shuts the fridge and leans on it, turning back towards them. “I might be able to look into how long it’s actually going to last, but it’ll take more time.”

“Do you know why it went so wrong?” Jihoon asks.

“Hmm.” Minghao shoots Junhui a calculating look. “It could be a few different things. You said it was originally a translation spell?”

“That’s what it looks like.”

“That makes it interesting, then. You have to have pretty specific parameters for those type of spells.” Minghao raises a shoulder in half a shrug. “The spell would fall apart if it was used on people other than the ones it was written for.”

“Like, it has to be written for specific languages?”

“Sure.” Minghao folds his arms in front of his chest, and his gaze sharpens on Junhui. “Specific languages, specific ages, even specific species. If you try to use a spell personalized for a human on a werewolf, or a half-fae, or anything like that, it’ll all go haywire.”

“Huh.” Jihoon rubs his mouth with his free hand, wondering. “You think something like that could be why it glitched out?”

“Probably.” Minghao gives Junhui one last look before turning his gaze to Jihoon. “Like I said, I can look into the time limit for it, but it’ll be a little while. It doesn’t look like you have too much to risk, though, as long as you keep in contact.”

“What if we don’t?”

Minghao hums and straightens his posture out, leaning back off the fridge. “Unclear, but… let’s just say that I wouldn’t recommend it.”

“Great.”

“Is there anything we can do to extend the time we can break contact?” Junhui pipes up. He sounds irritated, somehow, and when Jihoon chances a look up at him he’s just looking at Minghao, jaw clenched.

Minghao tips his head to the side thoughtfully. His hair is a bit shaggy, and it falls across his face a little. “I wonder.”

Jihoon watches, perplexed, as Minghao pulls his glasses off. He mutters a few words, too low and quick for Jihoon to hear them, and a thin flash of blue glitters across where the lenses would be. When he slides them back on they look almost the same as before, but when Jihoon looks carefully he can see the barest spark of blue-silver across the empty circle lenses.

“Oh _that’s_ interesting,” Minghao says under his breath.

“Please don’t say things like that when inspecting our weird, broken curse,” Jihoon retorts before he can stop himself.

Junhui actually laughs at loud at that, and his hand tightens on Jihoon’s. Minghao snorts too, and adjusts the glasses frames.

“Sorry, the structure is just - I haven’t seen anything really like it, you know.” He props his fists on the counter and peers at them. His eyes avoid Jihoon’s face, looking instead at the air around them. “Looks like the connection is based partly on duration and partly on intent.”

“Intent?”

“Stronger intent to make the connection stable should help actually strengthen it.” Minghao squints behind his glasses, eyes darting from Junhui to Jihoon and then back again. “You should be able to milk a little more time out of your loss of contact if you kind of build it up over a little bit of time.”

“We can do that,” Junhui says quickly, the words tumbling out of his mouth. “Thanks, Minghao, what would we do without you?”

“Probably passed out in the middle of your big test,” Minghao says, tapping his glasses once. The blue glint of light disappears, and he moves to push his arms back into his coat. “I’ll give you a call if I can figure anything out about the time limit. Please don’t kill yourself in the meantime.”

“I’ll do my best.” Junhui yanks Minghao into another one-armed hug, which the other endures with a smirk that speaks to familiarity. “Thanks, seriously.”

Minghao gives him a pat on the back and responds in Mandarin. Whatever he says earns him an ugly snort from Junhui and a shove backwards, and Minghao turns to Jihoon next with a crooked grin. “Seriously, though, I’m sorry about this whole thing. It sucks, curses.” He shrugs bony shoulders and shoves his hands in his pockets. “I’ll do my best to figure out anything that’ll help, when I can.”

“I appreciate that,” Jihoon offers, hesitantly, and waves awkwardly as Minghao lets himself out.

The apartment falls quiet around them when the door closes, but Junhui moves before things settle too far.

“The exam’s on Monday,” he says, spinning to face Jihoon and taking both hands in his. His palms almost completely cover Jihoon’s hands, and he keeps his eyes on Junhui’s so he doesn’t look at them too much. “We have just under two days to build up as much of a tolerance to separating as we can, then.”

The thing is - the whole thing feels awfully out of Jihoon’s hands. No idea about the spell, no idea what to do with it, not even a real idea of how it works, but Junhui just looks at him with that determined slant to his mouth and all he can do is sigh, nod, and grip Junhui’s hands right back. “Let’s do it.”

 

They have to go to Jihoon’s apartment eventually, because he’s an adult man who needs a change of pants and to make sure that his roommate knows he’s alive, and it goes about as poorly as he expects. Junhui and Soonyoung hit it off almost immediately, leaving Jihoon to pull Junhui around as he packs a bag for the next few days and resists the urge to stomp on Soonyoung’s foot for the fifth comment he makes about how Jihoon’s always had a weakness for taller guys, you know.

Junhui, because Jihoon’s starting to suspect he’s actually perfect and has never done anything wrong, ever, just laughs brightly at that and doesn’t take the bait, not once. Jihoon hates how relieved that makes him, and retaliates by accidentally getting scummy fishbowl water on Junhui’s shirt when he tries to change the water before they head out.

After that, things are pretty much the same as Friday. Junhui actually has to study, of course, and his apartment is quiet and warm when they settle in to the couch again, Junhui buried in a textbook and Jihoon plugged into his laptop.

He messes around with one of his latest drafts, zoned in the way he gets whenever he’s writing or producing, and it takes him a little while to notice that Junhui’s stopped looking at his notes and, instead, is looking very interested at him.

Jihoon blinks, and slides one ear of his headphones off. “What’s up?”

Junhui blinks back, seems to shake himself, and then shrugs. “You’re really focused with that, huh?”

“Um. I guess so.” Jihoon automatically saves his file, just in case.

“How long have you been doing that? Writing songs and stuff, I mean.”

“A while. Since high school, I think.” Jihoon feels his ears go red when Junhui goes even more wide-eyed and intrigued at that. “I mean, it took me awhile before anything was even really listenable, though.”

“That’s amazing, though!” Junhui taps his fingers on the spine of his textbook, studying apparently forgotten for now. “Can I - I know you must be so annoyed by people like this, but, can I hear something?”

Jihoon isn’t really surprised by that - he’s right, he hears that a lot - but it still makes his stomach go weird and shivery for a second before he shrugs. “Sure, um. Let me, let me pull up one of my older ones.”

He clicks around his files for a few seconds before settling on something he’s been putting the finishing touches on for the past few months - the most complete in a series of him messing around with alt-rock for the first time. It’s finished enough that he isn’t too worried about playing it, but the brightness of Junhui’s eyes still strikes nerves into his chest when he finally pulls up the audio file and disconnects his headphones so he can play it.

The song plays after a few second delay, and this is usually the part Jihoon hates about playing people his music. It’s different from performing it, or singing along to it, because at least then he has something to do with himself while they listen. With this, it’s just him, his laptop, and Junhui staring fixated at him with their ankles pressed close together.

And that - Jihoon can’t take all of that, thanks, so he quickly ducks his eyes to watch the layers of composition drift past on his producing software.

The song isn’t long, just over three minutes, and somewhere around the two minute mark Junhui actually snaps his textbook closed and sits up straight, spine fixed. Jihoon pretends he doesn’t see it, and his stomach goes sun-warm.

By the time it’s over, finally, Jihoon hits pause before it can restart itself and carefully looks back up at Junhui.

He looks, honestly, like he maybe got slapped. “That was amazing!” he says after a moment, as if to pause to catch his breath. “You really wrote that?”

“Yeah. It took a while,” Jihoon says, ducking his head back to the laptop so he can click the file closed. “It’s not really even done, yet.”

“Still, that’s so impressive. Way more impressive than anything magic could do, you know.” Junhui’s still grinning when JIhoon chances another glance at him, but his eyes are dark and strangely serious.

That flighty feeling in the corner of his mind, the one that shows itself whenever they break contact, is back. It stays in the shadows when Jihoon notices it, but he can feel it curl itself around the edges of the space.

Jihoon swallows, says something hopefully appropriately thankful, and plugs himself back into his headphones.

He needs this to be over sooner rather than later. It doesn’t seem like it’s good for his sanity.

 

Monday morning comes with the buzzing of Junhui’s alarm, and Jihoon reflexively tries to bury his face into the pillows. It seems impossible to get up, with how everything is still warm and soft from sleep.

His thoughts are slow. The arm around his waist shifts, and it takes a moment for him to realize that the pressure against the back of his neck is Junhui, face buried in the space between his neck and his shoulder.

Jihoon would dig his face back into the blankets and drift off again if the alarm didn’t continue in the background. He ends up having to carefully shift away from Junhui, keeping his hand on his arm, until the movement shakes him awake.

Jihoon rolls over to face Junhui, taking his wrist so he can hold it in between their chests. Junhui, for his part, makes some truly intelligible noises into the pillow before moving just enough to peer up at Jihoon.

He squints, and his hair is a mess, all over his forehead and ruffled in the back. He has red lines pressed into his face from the pillow. He looks at Jihoon curiously, and Jihoon almost jumps when he feels Junhui’s free arm snake around his waist.

“What if I just quit on the whole surgeon thing?” he mumbles, just loud enough to break through the warm silence of the room. His eyes glint with humor, and Jihoon has to bite his lip to stop himself from reaching out to brush his hair off his forehead.

“That doesn’t sound like the same person who couldn’t bear the thought of taking the six month leave of absence,” he says instead, and gets rewarded with an eye-roll.

“You librarians are all the same.” Junhui rolls over onto his stomach, taking Jihoon’s hand with him. “Too sensible.”

Jihoon smiles, because Junhui’s eyes are closed again, and then rips the blankets off of the bed.

The campus is quiet when they get there. There’s only a day or two left before the students have their break for the new year, and the few people they pass all seem to care far more about the last minute notes they’re buried in than the two people with gloves on one hand and bare hands between them.

“Are you nervous?” Junhui asks, breaking the silence of the grey morning. The sky is pale but light, and Jihoon thinks he can smell snow on the air.

“I should be asking you that,” he mutters. “You’re the one who has to try to actually pass tests. I can just sit in the hallway outside the classroom and have my own freak out.”

Junhui scoffs and swings their hands between them. The air around them is below freezing but Jihoon’s hand feels warmed, as if he was holding a mug of steaming coffee. “Positive thoughts, Lee Jihoon. Remember, Minghao said it’s partly the intent that counts.”

They stop just at the door of the medicine building, and Junhui reels around to face Jihoon and take both hands in his. “This is me putting my full intent into charging up our connection,” he says, eyebrows drawn together. “There goes all my intent. The best intent, probably ever.”

Jihoon snorts despite himself, and lets Junhui thread their fingers together. “I don’t know if this is how magic works.”

“Oh, no, it’s totally how it works.” Junhui’s grin is tilted and rakish and Jihoon hates that he’s charmed. “There goes all my intent. Whoosh. That’s it.”

“Save some of that brain power for your exam, okay?”

“There’s that sensibility again.”

Junhui’s smile sticks, but he grows quieter the further they get into the med building. After a few long minutes, they pause at a lecture hall. A piece of paper taped to the door announces the exam being held in there for the next two hours, and Junhui nods sideways to it.

“That’s my stop.” He looks a little pale, but he shrugs when Jihoon turns his eyebrows up at it. “It’ll be fine. That’s the whole intent thing, okay? We’ll be fine.”

And with that Junhui drops his hands, swallows hard, and waves before pushing his way into the exam room just before the proctor.

The hallway is quiet once the door closes on the murmurs of the students in the classroom, and Jihoon half-stumbles back. He sinks into a bench against the wall a few doors down and tries not to panic.

They should be fine. Everything _will_ be fine.

The minutes tick by slow at first. He catches himself looking for any reason to suspect that the connection is acting up, twitching his fingers against imaginary chill, but -

There’s nothing.

Jihoon flips his phone around in his hands but doesn’t unlock it.

It’s weird. Barely three days ago the biggest thing on his mind was making sure he didn’t accidentally double-book himself with voice classes over the break. Now he’s sitting in a quiet corner of a building he’s never been in before on campus, making himself sick with worry about the test scores of an almost complete stranger.

An almost complete stranger that he was pretty quickly okay with cuddling, a completely unwanted voice in the back of his mind pipes up.

“That’s - anyone else would be in the same boat,” he mutters to himself. “It’s like PTSD. Or Stockholm syndrome. We’re in a fairly traumatic situation together, that bonds people pretty quickly. Like being in the same elevator when it breaks down.”

People stuck in the same elevator don’t almost immediately wonder at how handsome the other people there is, that same part of his mind retorts.

Jihoon resists the urge to continue arguing with himself. He already feels a little like he’s going crazy - he doesn’t want any passing students to think the same thing.

So he waits.

They’re just approaching the hour mark before Jihoon even notices anything. He has a moment where a stray thought that maybe the spell is done after all crosses his mind, but almost the next second he feels it.

A cold spark lights up in the pit of his stomach, and Jihoon settles heavier back against the bench when it does. “Here we go,” he breathes, and folds his hands together as if in prayer.

It goes slowly at first. The chill settles in, but other than that he feels pretty much the same.

At an hour and ten, the ice spreads up to his ribs and chest, and the start of a headache makes itself known.

At an hour and twenty, the ice is in his throat, crawling up the back of it in creeping frost. Jihoon lets out a long breath and tries not to worry about Junhui.

It’s about then that he closes his eyes - not because the light is bad, not yet, but because he’s decided he’s had enough of just seeing the edges of this presence in the back of his mind.

He’s ready to catch it.

It takes some focus at first. He’s still trying to ignore the deep-set chill that’s working its way down to his fingertips, and it’s hard to switch his focus so internally in a way that he’s not used to doing.

Then - there it is. The sudden flash of movement, almost as if it’s reflecting the light. The presence flickers around the edges, in the dark, but Jihoon imagines he can feel its eyes on him.

“Hey,” he thinks, and the words present themselves near-audibly in his thoughts. He sees the movement pause, for a second, surprised. “Why don’t you come out and show yourself?”

A new round of goosebumps ripple down his arms and the presence makes a low, raspy noise.

Jihoon imagines spreading his hands open, palms up. “Nothing to be scared of. I’m barely magic at all. Just a librarian - not even a full-time librarian, too.”

The presence chitters again, the sound like claws on stone floor. He can feel it curl its way around the walls of his mind. He imagine a hot rush of breath against his chilled skin.

“Do you know Junhui?”  
The question barely leaves his thoughts when the presence lets out a low, barely audible growl. Somehow, Jihoon’s not intimidated by it - it sounds scared, almost. Like an animal backed into a corner and ready to spring out at the first person to approach it.

“Okay.” He tightens his hands together in real life, grounding himself on the feeling of the fabric of his jeans underneath them. “Are you - worried about him?”

He swallows back a wave of nausea and listens for the presence. It doesn’t respond immediately, just circles around him again. “I’m worried too. I - I’m not sure if we can last the whole two hours. Plus another hour after this.”

The presence starts another circuit around him. “It’s not his fault this happened. It’s not mine either, I guess, but he’s the one with something really big to lose over it. I don’t… want that to happen.”

His fingers are starting to go numb, and he slumps back heavier onto the back of the bench, just in case his body decides it doesn’t want to hold him up anymore.

“I’m here to help him, though. We’re kind of stuck together at this point.”  
There’s a chilling pause where Jihoon can’t sense any movement at all, just the weight of a stare on the back of his neck.

Then, just as his head starts in on a now-familiar pounding, the presence moves into the light.

Jihoon doesn’t turn around. Mentally, that is. He’s suddenly worried about scaring it away, somehow, so he just listens to the sound of rasping against the floor of his mind.

He startles a bit when the presence reaches him. He can’t see, suddenly, blackness rushing in on the edges of his inner mind. All there is is a heavy weight laid across his feet.

And, then, a sudden flash of emotions.

He’s burning up from the inside out. He can’t focus on anything except a singular point of clear, white light in the center of his vision. He knows intrinsically that the second he reaches that light the fire will cool.

His skin itches all over, and it’s all he can do to keep himself together. He can’t reach that light - not yet. It’s sharpening, brightening in on one small, singular point.

He’s sickly worried that the light will go out before he reaches it.

Something about the heat he feels, so much more intense than the usual, is familiar, and it’s only another second of thought before it clicks - Junhui.

He wrenches his eyes open and bites back a curse as the light stings them. Now that he’s pulled himself out of that strange, dark space in the back of his mind he can feel the ice in his stomach all over again, and it knocks the breath out of his lungs.

His phone is sitting on the bench next to him, but he can’t pry his frostbitten hands apart to check the time. He’s lost all sense of it - it could have only been minutes, or days.

He has to stick it out, though.

Jihoon can’t imagine Junhui’s situation - he doesn’t know much about medicine, or surgeon magic, but he doubts it’s easy to focus on it when you feel like you’re melting from inside. He wishes he could send any energy he had to Junhui’s side of things - he’s alright to just be paralyzed on a bench, as long as Junhui can still think straight.

He might lose time. It goes foggy, cloudy, like when water hits hot coals and steams up.

Then, out of nowhere, the presence in the back of his mind lets out a happy purr and the door down the hallway opens.

Somehow, Jihoon stands up. He’s not really sure how, his knees straighten without his permission, but he actually manages to avoid just falling right over when he spots Junhui leading the stream of students exiting.

If Jihoon’s eyes weren’t already tearing up from the brightness of the overhead LED lights, Junhui’s blinding grin would probably do it. His eyes look tired, and Jihoon can see how he’s had to push his hair off his forehead because of the heat, but he’s standing and walking and then he’s grabbing Jihoon around the waist, pushing his hands underneath Jihoon’s sweater until they’re touching bare skin.

His hands sting from the sudden rush of heat back into his frozen fingers, but Jihoon ignores it in favor of grabbing Junhui’s upper arms before he can just go ahead and keel over from relief. “We did it,” he says instead, the words tumbling over each other.

“You’re amazing,” Junhui breaths out, and leans down to press their foreheads together. His hands wrap all the way around Jihoon’s hip bones and burn imprints of his fingertips into his skin. “Oh my god, are you okay? You’re freezing.”

“Getting better now.” Jihoon has to close his eyes against the force of Junhui’s smile. “The exam?”

“It was fine until towards the end. I think it’s okay, the practical is weighted more. You’re sure you feel up to doing that again?” Junhui pulls back just enough to peer down at him, eyebrows furrowed. “I - I know it hits you really hard. If you think you can’t do it again we can try to figure something else out.”

“What? No!” Jihoon tightens his grip on Junhui, as if to stop him from pulling back. “We’re almost at the end of it, I can handle it.” He blinks, hard, to get the last of the sting from his eyes. “We just need to build up the connection more.”

“Right. Okay.” A shiver runs up Jihoon’s spine as Junhui’s thumbs trace absent-minded circles into his skin. “Just gotta get enough charge for an hour, right? We can totally do that. We’re the best at this whole broken spell mess.”

He grins, lopsided and charming, and another wave of heat works its way from where he’s touching Jihoon and all the way up to his cheeks.

In that spot in the back of his mind, Minghao tells them that stronger intent towards the bond in turn should strengthen it.

Jihoon swallows, hears a distant click of claws against stone in the darkness, and pulls Junhui down with one hand at the back of his neck to kiss him.

Jihoon doesn’t know much about magic, but even he can feel the way the broken spell settles like a pleased cat lying down in the sun. It thrums through his veins, circuiting from his fingertips to Junhui’s skin and right back again.

Jihoon barely has time to wonder at the feeling, at the way the heat of it thaws the last frost from Jihoon’s stomach, before Junhui makes a happy rumble deep in his chest and pushes forward. Jihoon’s back hits the wall, but he hardly registers it in favor of kissing harder as Junhui wraps his hands the rest of the way around his waist.

Jihoon has to tip his head back a kind of ridiculous degree to keep contact, although Junhui seems to be doing his best to tug him up onto his toes. His one hand threads without thinking through the hair at the back of Junhui’s neck, and the other tightens on his bicep.

The ice is long gone in his stomach - it’s being replaced with a warm pool of lava, bubbling up into the space around his heart, through his ribs.

Time goes weird again, and by the time Jihoon pushes away Junhui has managed to lick his way into his mouth and accidentally made him drop his phone to clatter on the floor.

“Um.” Jihoon blinks up at him, slowly going back down onto the flat of his feet. “What time is your practical, again?”

Junhui stares down at him, hair mussed, mouth red. His eyes look brighter than normal, closer to a mossy green than brown. Something thrills distantly in Jihoon’s chest that he made him look like that, but he pushes it down before it can grow.

After a good twenty seconds, Junhui swallows and pulls his hands back so they mostly rest on the outside of Jihoon’s sweater, just his thumbs tucked under to touch skin. “What time is it now?”

Jihoon moves to check his watch, but realizes he hadn’t put it on that morning. “Let me, um.” He bends down to grab his phone, making sure not to accidentally shake Junhui’s grip off. “11:27.”

“Oh. In three minutes.”

“Oh.” They look at each other for another few seconds. “We - we should probably get you there.”

They end up sprinting up two floors to get to the lab that Junhui’s scheduled to do his practical in. Junhui’s palm is sweaty in his, but he looks over his shoulder and grins so wide that Jihoon can’t think anything bad about it.

Junhui manages to get into the room at exactly 11:29. Jihoon sits heavily on a chair in a lobby area a few feet away, presses his hands to his eyes, and feels absolutely fine for the next hour.

 

“Lets go get food. Or drinks. Maybe both. People get both, right? Let’s do that.”

Jihoon shakes his head but can’t stop his mouth from ticking up in the corner as Junhui yanks him through campus. “You’re feeling pretty good about the exams, then?”

“Oh, the best. Never felt better.” Junhui grins at him. He has a few scattered snowflakes in the black of his hair - a light flurry started just after they left the medical building. “C’mon, school’s out.”

“For you, sure.”

“You got tomorrow off, right? School’s kind of out for you, too.” Junhui pulls to a stop and gives Jihoon what should be illegal puppy eyes. “I want to thank you, anyways. It was your idea that made the connection last through that last hour, I think.”

Jihoon goes red at the mention of - that. “It’s really nothing, um. I’m glad the test went well.”

“Yeah.” Junhui blinks, and rubs away a snowflake from his cheek. “Lunch, at least.”

“...Sure. Fine. Let’s do that.”

Jihoon’s starting to worry about the state of his backbone, because lunch turns into Junhui holding his hand above the table and enthusing about a friend of his who’s headlining a dance show that afternoon. That turns into them at said dance show, Junhui almost shouting in his ear to tell him stories about half of the people there, because he seems to know literally everyone within a ten mile radius of the university.

The connection is feeling warm and almost tangible, like a gold ribbon tied from Jihoon’s ribs to Junhui’s wrist. It tugs him to stay close, to touch more, to never leave.

He’s not… sure how to think about it, so he lets Junhui buy him drinks at the bar after the show turns into just a normal party.

“You’re crazy,” Jihoon laughs, watching Junhui knock back a third shot while Jihoon nurses a beer. “I refuse to drag your drunk ass back to your apartment. I won’t be able to control all your limbs.”

“Nah,” Junhui snorts, and winks at him. “I have great tolerance. Family tradition.”

“Genetics, not tradition, I think.”

“Right, that.” Junhui hooks his ankle around Jihoon’s to free his hands up so he can check his phone and sip his beer at the same time. “We totally have this thing figured out, you know. Best pair of cursed people ever.”

“I’m not sure if that’s a good ranking to be on.” Junhui makes a face at him over the rim of his glass, and it’s - cute. Fuck. “We should probably head out soon, though. Right?”

Junhui shrugs lazily and puts the beer down, grabs Jihoon’s hand once he does. “We can. This is nice, though, right?” His smile is shy, a little.

It makes Jihoon start to think more and more that they should really get out of here. He’s feeling warm, just on the edge of tipsy, and all that plus having Junhui’s undivided attention is doing something to his nerves. “Fresh air would be nice.”

Junhui blinks, eyebrows raised, and nods. He’s gotten the bartender’s attention and paid for their drinks before Jihoon even realizes, and he brushes a hand to the side of Jihoon’s neck while he tugs his coat on. “Are you feeling okay?”

“Um, yeah, just.” Jihoon takes Junhui’s hand carefully. “A little overwhelmed. I guess.”  
Junhui looks like someone just killed his cat in front of him. “Oh my god, I’m sorry, I know this is a lot. And after all the breaking contact shit too.”

“It’s okay, really, I just… air. Air is good.”

The snow has gotten heavier by now, and Jihoon actually has to squint against it as Junhui leads them down the street. They aren’t far from Junhui’s apartment, but the walk is just long enough that the snow under Jihoon’s collar and the bite of the wind gets him shivering before long.

Junhui notices, obviously. “Are you cold?”

Jihoon shrugs, the whole lower half of his face buried in the collar of his coat. “It’s cold out.”

Junhui looks very serious, and just a little drunk, before a bright smile erupts on his face. “I can help with that.”

They pull to a stop outside a convenience store, the street around them still and muffled with the snow that piles up now on the sidewalk. Junhui wiggles his glove off his free hand and splays it out in front of them, palm up.

“Watch this.”

At first Jihoon has trouble looking away from Junhui, whose eyes are that deep plant green again in the street light reflecting off the snow. When he finally looks down at his hand again, though, he almost forgets to keep his hand in Junhui’s grip.

“Oh my god, Junhui!” Low, blue fire ripples in the dip of Junhui’s palm like a pool of water. It rises in short flames but otherwise stays stuck to his skin, curling around his wrist and knuckles like a happy pet. “What - are you okay?”

Junhui laughs, the sound bright and almost jarring in the silence around them. “Oh, more than okay.” The fire lights shadows against his face but they don’t look strange - they highlight his brow bones, the flicker of his eyes, the way his hair falls over his forehead. “I promise it won’t hurt you, just. Try.”

Jihoon, privately, reminds himself just how much of the magic user world goes straight over his head. He gives Junhui one more assessing look before, carefully, slowly, reaching his free hand towards the flame.

It flickers and sparks when he gets close. For some reason, it seems like it’s saying hi.

Junhui raises his eyebrows and steps closer, squeezing their hands together. “See? It likes you.”

Jihoon laughs roughly, breath puffing out in a cloud of steam. “If you say so.” Then, slowly, he touches the pad of one finger to the outer edge of Junhui’s palm.

The little track of blue flame curls straight to his fingertip, and Jihoon doesn’t have time to wince back before it wraps itself up and around his first knuckle.

It doesn’t burn. It’s warm, even hot where the skin is thin against the bone, but otherwise it just feels ticklish against his skin. Jihoon looks up at Junhui again, and he looks absolutely -

Jihoon blinks, hard.

Happy. He looks happy.

“Is that helping?” Junhui asks, voice hushed now, almost private, even for how they’re standing in the middle of the street.

The trail of fire weaves its way through Jihoon’s fingers, and with it a deep sense of heat sinks down, into his blood, through his body.

“What is it,” Jihoon says, more of a breath than a question. The fire sparks orange and yellow before returning to blue.

“It’s mine.” Junhui tips his head to the side, abashed, when Jihoon looks questioning. “I, um. More things run in my family than a high drinking tolerance.”

The wind picks up around them, sending Jihoon’s hair ruffling over his forehead. The fire doesn’t seem affected - doesn’t even flicker. “I’m not exactly following.”

Junhui winces. “Remember what Minghao was saying, about things that could have thrown the original translation spell off kilter?”

“Sure,” Jihoon offers. “Change in intended language, or if the people the spell was cast on weren’t the people it was written for. Right?”

“Right.” The fire in Junhui’s palm sputters. “If the spell was written for humans, it would get all twisted up if it was cast on non-humans.”

Jihoon’s finger twitches away from Junhui’s palm, and the fire slinks back to Junhui like a scolded dog. Junhui, when Jihoon looks back at him, looks very much the same. “And… what would be an example of that?”

Junhui’s sheepish smile doesn’t wilt, but the fire dulls to a low simmer as he shrugs. “Ever heard of the dragonborn?”

Just as the words leave his mouth the fire catches emerald tones in his eyes, which Jihoon is really, really sure were just brown a minute ago. His canine teeth, bared by the smile, flash pointed, and the hand that Jihoon was still holding burns hotter against his.

The presence in the back of his mind makes a low, rattled purr and curls around his feet.

“I… may have read about them in a book?” Jihoon says. “That’s - oh.”

“Yeah.” Junhui’s smile widens, just a degree. “I’ve had a lot of people tell me I have a nice tail, you know.”

“Oh my god.”

Junhui has to pull Jihoon back into him when he tries to take off in sheer disapproval. “I’m kidding! I mean, yeah, I can have a tail sometimes, but it’s really a bit of a hereditary side effect these days. It’s all more about fire specialization, and some - personal characteristics.”

He looks even more embarrassed when Jihoon allows him to pull him to a stop. “I… maybe should have mentioned it, huh?”

“You don’t exactly have an obligation to come out to anyone you meet.”

“Yeah, just maybe people I get accidentally bonded to?”

“Well.” Jihoon shrugs. “What happened, happened. Me knowing you’re - what, a dragon? Wouldn’t have helped matters.”

“Dragonborn.” Blue fire dances from Junhui’s fingertips, lovingly.

“Dragonborn.” Jihoon eyes the flame, then looks back up at him. “You said personal characteristics? That wouldn’t have anything to do with your - collecting habits, would it?”

Junhui blinks, once, then goes red. “Oh. Um. I think the books call it hoarding tendencies?” Jihoon has to laugh at that, and Junhui cracks a smile again, too. “I like things, okay? I like to keep things I like close.” His smile goes soft. “Keep them safe.”

The presence - the dragon - curled up like a cat in the center of Jihoon’s mind, rumbles.

Jihoon feels warmed to the bone, with the snow blowing around them and everything soft and quiet and dark. He wants to kiss Junhui again, even though he has no good reason to.

Then, Junhui’s cell phone rings, breaking the silence.

The fire at his fingertips winks out, startled, and Junhui looks a little like he just woke up. “Sorry, um.” He fumbles with his free hand to pull out his phone and check it. “It’s Minghao”

“Minghao?” Jihoon peers at the screen as Junhui unlocks it and accepts the call, switching into speakerphone mode almost automatically.

“Hello? It’s late, you senior citizen, shouldn’t you be in bed by now?” Junhui says into the phone when it connects, winking at Jihoon.

“You’re a year older than me,” Minghao’s voice says dryly over the crackle of the speaker. “Do you want my professional curse breaker advice or not?”

“I thought we already got it, to be honest.”

“Not the newest update.” There’s a scratching on the other side of the line, something that sounds like pencil on paper, and then Minghao continues. “I think I found the time limit in the spell structure.”

Jihoon’s stomach drops, and Junhui cups his hand over the phone screen to protect it from snow. “You - really? How? What?”

“It wasn’t that hard, once I had time to sit down and untangle it. You owe me for that, by the way.” Another pause. “Honestly, you’re kind of lucky it happened when it happened. Great timing.”

“Is there great timing for a broken spell to accidentally hit you?” Jihoon asks.

“Okay, no, but all things considered you really lucked out. The original spell’s parameters were limited to a specific date in time, but when it all twisted and broke the only part of the date that wasn’t lost was the year.” Minghao tuts, and the wind howls down the street. “It should end on the new year.”

The only reason Jihoon has any idea of how Junhui reacts is because he can feel the way his fingers on his hand twitch, tighten, and then seem to force themselves loose. There’s a few, long seconds of silence before he responds. “You’re sure?”

“As much as I can be with a spell that messed up. Look, don’t make any expensive bets on it, but I’m pretty sure that as soon as the clock ticks over into the new year you won’t have any more effects.”

Jihoon takes in a breath, feeling the cold air in his lungs for the first time since Junhui’s flame wrapped around his knuckle. “Tomorrow’s New Year’s Eve.”

The dragon in his mind growls, but Junhui just takes another moment before talking. “Okay. Thanks, Minghao.”

“Hey, what are friends for, if not to help you out with the latest series of unfortunate events going on in your life?” There’s movement on his end of the line, and then he pipes back up. “I actually have to go, like, spend time with family and shit now, but I just wanted to let you know as soon as I figured it out.”

“I appreciate that,” Junhui says. The cold is sinking back into Jihoon’s skin, through his coat. “Thanks. Have a good night.”

Minghao hangs up first, leaving Junhui to lock his phone and put it back in his pocket.

Jihoon isn’t shaking. It’s not that cold yet.

He’s still holding Junhui’s hand but he feels that now-familiar ball of ice start to form in the pit of his stomach.

“So.” Junhui is the first to speak, although Jihoon can’t quite look at him yet. “That’s, um. Pretty good news. Right?”

“Definitely.” Jihoon feels frost start to spread up his spine. “One more day, then.”

“Yeah.” Junhui’s mouth is thinned around the beginning of a frown, which just makes Jihoon feel more like he’s about to be sick. “Are you - I don’t want to - “

“We should go back,” Jihoon rushes, and tucks his face back into his collar as he starts to tug Junhui back down the sidewalk. “I’m - all the, um, contact breaking, earlier. We should sleep.”

Junhui doesn’t respond, the dragon in Jihoon’s mind makes a soft noise and slinks back into the shadows, and Junhui’s palm in Jihoon’s feels almost chilled.

 

Jihoon doesn’t sleep well that night. Between his racing thoughts and the fact that Junhui’s sheets are colder than usual, it’s no big surprise.

He must drift off at some point, though, because one minute it’s dark and the next minute that he opens his eyes the light through the windows is a pale, pale grey.

He doesn’t move, just focuses his eyes on the shadows of outlines of Junhui’s room he can see. Junhui didn’t sleep with his arm over him this night - they chanced just keeping their hands on top of each other instead, and they only accidentally separated once.

Jihoon blinks, eyes dry and tired, at the rocks and books and candles that cover almost every bare inch of Junhui’s room and thinks.

He’s always liked independence. Even when he was dating someone, he was always clear that certain things were more important to him; his music, his hopeful career, keeping his mom’s heat on back home. That’s just how he functions.

So it stings a particularly sensitive spot that he already feels a part of himself mourning this separation. The dragon in the back of his mind hasn’t made another appearance, not since last night. He tries not to feel like it’s a personal insult, but it doesn’t really help.

The thing is -

He rolls his head against the pillow to look at the ceiling.

In about three days Junhui managed to look at Jihoon and make him feel like he was the most interesting, impressive person in the room. He touched him like their skin was made of magnets and was charming, and funny, and smart.

He kissed him like there was nothing else he’d rather be doing.

And Jihoon can’t know if the spell had anything to do with it.

No, in fact, he thinks, closing his eyes shut until bright light dances against his closed eyelids. It had to have something to do with it. A connection spell, even warped like this, obviously creates fondness. Bonding.

He swallows back the feeling of embarrassment that tries to crawl up his throat, and stays very still when he feels the bed shifting as Junhui seems to wake up.

He’s already created too much unnecessary attachment in a short amount of time.

Jihoon’s smart. He needs to be smart about this, too.

It would have been harder if Junhui hadn’t also been acting - distant, nervous, anxious - but as it was, it was easier to skirt around each other that morning. About as much as could happen when they were still attached, at least, skipping from Junhui’s fingertips on the back of Jihoon’s arm to Jihoon making sure to bump their ankles together under the table during breakfast.

The day drags on painfully either way. Jihoon opens and then closes six different tabs of his producing software without actually doing anything by noon, and then switches over into quietly returning a few calls from his students that he’d missed in all the chaos of the last few days.

Junhui mostly frowns deeply at his laptop screen and gets up every hour to dump out his cold tea and brew new tea, which he then still doesn’t drink.

The sun rises, sits in the sky, and sets, and before Jihoon can talk himself into doing anything at all it’s almost nine at night. Which, of course, is when Junhui finally swallows and sits up straight on the couch to look over the laptop screen at him.

“Okay,” he starts, and it really is kind amazing how Jihoon didn’t guess earlier that he’s not entirely human. His eyes, focused, immediately make him feel pinned against the couch even though they stay that normal shade of brown. “I know this entire situation is kind of the most ridiculous thing to ever happen to anyone, probably ever, but I just want you to know that I like you.”

He barrels forward when Jihoon opens his mouth. “I think you’re funnier than you know, and I like spending time with you. I’m really, really glad that if this was going to happen, that it happened with you.” He deflates, a little, and rakes a hand through his hair as if it will sharpen his thoughts. “I don’t think that whatever happens at midnight should change that.”

Jihoon knows he should be happy with that, he does, but - “I don’t know how you can just know that.” He swallows, and continues in spite of the way Junhui’s face freezes in surprise. “We’re under a spell. You’ve never known me _not_ under a spell. Isn’t this why the med school is so careful about spells that create mental connections? It’s automatically an unstable mindset to be in, no matter how careful you are.”

The words spill out faster, now. “I think - the spell creates the necessity for physical contact, but there’s also mental connections. I’m pretty sure that I can feel you in my mind,” he stutters, and the dragon stays still. “And I’m sure that if I can feel you, you’re feeling some of me too. I, I don’t know how it works exactly, but… I don’t think we should make any promises right now. Not until everything’s over.”

He looks away, because he doesn’t want to see Junhui’s expression after that. He just focuses in on the one patch of skin on the bone of his ankle that’s touching Junhui’s, lightly.

It’s chilled.

After a sickening moment Junhui speaks again. “You think I’m, what? Brainwashed into liking you? Is that really it?”

“I don’t know,” Jihoon says again, attempts it more sternly. More sure of himself. “And neither do you. We should - we should just try to get out of this all with as little harm as possible. That was the whole point of trying to get you through your exam, right?”

He makes the mistake of glancing up at Junhui with that, and immediately he can’t look away. Junhui’s eyes aren’t brown, or the mossy green that they were after the kiss - they’re almost electric green, piercing.

His skin heats up against Jihoon’s ankle. He doesn’t look mad, really, just… deflated. “You really want to do it this way.”

It isn’t a question, but Jihoon answers it anyways. “I just think it’s smarter,” he says, and feels himself clutching the sides of his laptop like a lifeline. “Honestly, I should probably go back to my place as soon as we think it’s safe to. If the spell really ends at midnight - um. It might help break it if we have physical space between us. Right?”

Junhui regards him carefully, pointedly, for a long moment without speaking. “If you think that’s best,” he says, and draws his foot into himself, separating their skin. “Then I won’t stop you.”

Nothing happens immediately when the contact breaks, they’ve been touching for too long for it to be instantaneous, but Jihoon still feels sick when he ducks into Junhui’s bedroom to gather up the few things that have accumulated there over the weekend. When he has everything shoved into his backpack - minus his watch, which he’s starting to worry he lost somewhere between the library and here - he wanders back out to see Junhui still sitting in the same position on the couch.

He looks up when Jihoon gets within a few feet of the couch, and his eyes are still that green. “It’s still another two hours,” he says, standing up to face Jihoon. He’s tall, even in sock feet, and Jihoon grasps harder onto the straps of his backpack. “You think you can make it ‘till midnight?”

“We did it for your exam,” Jihoon replies, breaking his gaze to toe his sneakers on. “And we’ve had longer to maintain contact since then. I’ll be fine.”

When he looks back up Junhui’s suddenly much closer, so close that he can feel the heat of his skin. He can’t read his expression, which is strangely worrying. Jihoon hadn’t realized until now how open his face usually was.

“I told you, how dragonborn feel about the things they like,” Junhui starts. He shoves his hands in his jeans and shrugs when Jihoon nods, hesitantly. “Maybe you’re right and I’m being auto-piloted by some glitched spell right now. Sure, whatever. Either way, I like you right now, and I want you close to me right now.”

His eyebrows draw together. He really is handsome. “If I can’t have that, I’d just like you to be safe. And if I can somehow decrease the chances that in an hour you’re on the ground with a distance migraine, then I want to do that.”

He takes a step closer to Jihoon, who grips his backpack straps tighter still. “Can I just do that?”

If Jihoon was really as smart as he hopes he is, or as Junhui seems to think he is, he would say no. He’d leave right now, catch a bus before it flips to the night schedule and he has to wait thirty minutes.

He must not be that smart, though, because he nods and his eyes are shut by the time Junhui leans down to kiss him.

It’s softer than the kiss yesterday. Jihoon isn’t still reeling from two hours of contact break, he’s not shaky and almost frost-bitten. Junhui doesn’t even reach out to touch him, except for the kiss, and Jihoon misses the surety of his hands on his waist.

It’s soft, and quick, and it makes the dragon in Jihoon’s mind wrap itself into a ball in the farthest corner, snout tucked under its tail.

Junhui’s looking at him when Jihoon’s eyes blink open, and his mouth is a sad diagonal slash. “Thanks,” he says, and steps back so Jihoon’s in the entryway alone. “For the help with the exam.”

“No problem.” Jihoon adjusts his backpack, swallows, and goes for the door. “Have a good winter break.”

“You too,” Junhui says, and the hallway of his apartment is deathly silent when Jihoon closes the door behind him.

His mind stays clear of fog during the walk to the bus stop, and the bus ride itself is quick and free of any unnatural chill or headache.

He gets home to an empty apartment - of course Soonyoung is out for New Year’s Eve, what was he expecting? The fish seems happy enough to see him, and he feeds him even though he knows that Soonyoung tends to dump food in any time he walks by the tank at all.

Jihoon sits on his couch - on the right, because he sat on the left at Junhui’s - and watches a travel documentary and the clock. At 11:49 his left temple begins to pound, and he shivers.

At midnight the sound of fireworks outside almost drowns out the soft noise he hears himself make when the pounding stops, abruptly, and the dragon in his mind is nowhere to be found.

 

“Jihoon! Look at you, it feels like it’s been ages. Did you have a good break?”

Jihoon grins at the circulation librarian and shrugs, folding his coat over one arm. “It’s only been a week and a half! It was good, nothing exciting. I’m sure you all enjoyed not having students around for a little bit.”

She flaps a hand at him and goes back to her computer, and he wanders over to log himself into the desktop at the research help desk.

After a few days of snow into January the weather cleared up, although the grass around campus still has banks of unmelted snow on it. He gave himself a few days to finalize some new one-on-one coaching sessions for the new season, so he ends up going back to work at the library on Wednesday. The campus itself is still fairly quiet, even though classes started back up on Monday, everyone recovering from break and meeting back up with friends.

Soonyoung asked, the first day in January, about Junhui.

Jihoon wasn’t sure what he had said back - it had been mostly stammer, but it seemed to get some message across, because Soonyoung hadn’t asked again.

He didn’t know how he could feel, now, the empty spot in his mind where the dragon - Junhui? - had claimed as its own, but his thoughts echo in it now. He’s still just as non-magical as always, can’t sense any other form of magic or see its structure the way some people can, but that little room in his thoughts stands starkly empty.

After the first few days back into his normal routine of fish feeding, voice coaching, attempting to produce, and going to bed early, it almost starts to feel unreal. It’s not that he can’t remember things that happened those few days - it actually comes back to him in sometimes too-stark detail - but the whole situation feels like it happened to a different person.

The little space in his mind stays, though, and Jihoon spends a few hours wrapped around a mug of tea that he doesn’t drink, thinking about how he’s going to fill it up now.

The library is a nice place to come back to, though, even for how much it’s not exactly his passion. It’s quiet, and organized, and he knows exactly what’s required of him.

The start of the semester is always quiet for the library, so he is fully expecting a shift where he can work on updating research guides and not getting interrupted by questions.

It’s 9 in the morning when he clocks in. At 9:14, a shadow casts across the print-out of one of the professor’s syllabi that he has next to him to cross-reference with their research guide, and when he looks up his throat seals itself closed.

“Morning.”

Junhui has his hands in the pockets of his coat, his hair loosely swept to one side, and a backpack slung over one shoulder lazily. His eyes are brown, his smile is nervous, and Jihoon’s stomach drops just the same when he sees him.

Jihoon unsticks his throat, because he’s an adult, and can act like one. “Good morning.”

“Right.” Junhui opens his mouth to continue, shuts it with a click, frowns, and then starts again. “I really, honestly was intending to be a bit more smooth with all this, I promise.”

“What?”

“I had a whole thing about how I was going to ask about your break and tell you about my exam results. They were good, by the way, the exam - aced the practical.” He tips his head to the side and his hair falls over his forehead, familiar. “And I was going to say something about your fish, maybe, I hadn’t really worked that part out yet.”

Junhui lets out a breath. “But then, right, I come to the library, and I don’t even really know when your shifts are so I’ve just been poking my head in every time I walk by to check. And you weren’t here yesterday, or Monday, but you’re here now. So, right, I have these talking points, but then I start walking towards you and everything just kind of escapes me. And I’m rambling, which isn’t something I normally do, at least not in Korean, so I don’t really have an escape plan right now.”

Jihoon can’t help the snort that escapes him, and as he covers his mouth with a hand Junhui lights up like it was the best thing he’s ever heard. “I’m glad the exam went well?” he offers, and even that sentence makes Junhui’s eyes even brighter.

“It did, it went so well, and I came here to see you because I - wanted to see you without the spell, obviously, because,” he swallows, and Jihoon sees the bob of his throat behind his coat collar. “Because I felt the spell end, just fizzle out right there, but I still thought about you. Every day. And now I’m seeing you again, and you look the same, and you sound the same, and even though I don’t feel like my internal organs are trying to boil themselves alive I still want to hold your hand.”

Jihoon isn’t sure what his face does at that, but whatever it is must encourage Junhui, because he carries on with vigor. “I think it’d be cool, um, to hang out sometime. I’d like to listen to more of your music.” He pushes his hair off his forehead, and doesn’t seem to care when it flops back down. “The spell’s gone. I still like you.”

Junhui steps forward like he forgot the desk was there, and when he bumps into it he looks down and flushes, ears first. “I just thought you should know all that.”

The spell is gone. Jihoon knows that, he can’t feel the faint impression of thread connecting their hands the way he did a week ago, or the anxious pace of the dragon in his head.

He doesn’t need the dragon to tell him, though, that Junhui is being completely, adorably sincere. His eyes do that just fine.

“I work a full shift today,” Jihoon starts, tapping his fingers nervously against the desk. “Um. But, afterwards, we could - I don’t know. Whatever normal people do on first dates when they’re not being half-cursed by a stray charm.”

Junhui startles, spine springing straight, eyes wide and flashing the slightest tint of green. “Yes! Yes, um, we should totally do that.” He breaks, then, into a grin, and reaches forward to hold the edge of the desk closest to him. “Hey, uh. You want to know something else, now that the spell’s broken and you’re still willing to talk to me?”

“I - I’m not just _willing to talk to you_ \- “

“I can give these back, now.” Junhui slings his backpack around to his front and digs through the first pocket for a moment. He unearths a handful of what looks at first like junk, but when he dumps it out on the desk in front of Jihoon the first thing he can do is laugh.

Lying there against the wood grain is a familiar guitar pick that usually gets left in one of his pants pockets, a phone charger he had been sure he had forgotten accidentally at Junhui’s but hadn’t wanted to ask about, and his missing watch.

Jihoon picks up his watch and presses his thumbs into the clock face. He’s sure he has some stupid expression on, but he doesn’t really care right now. “Those dragonborn hoarding tendencies give up on you, now?”

“Nah.” Junhui zips his backpack up and when he looks back up his grin is pointy and his eyes flash moss green. “Technically, I’ll have them all if you’re with me, too.”

Jihoon gets teased for the rest of the semester by the circulation desk librarians, but as he pushes himself onto his toes to lean over the desk and press a kiss onto Junhui’s mouth it’s the last thing he could possibly be worried about.

**Author's Note:**

> For my darling Rosie - sorry it's quite possibly the tropiest thing ever. I don't know how I teleported back to 2009 while writing this, but it happened. I hope you like this, even though the only things I got from your wishlist were Jun/Jihoon and something new years related.
> 
> Also, please don't think too hard about the timeline of this school's exam period. I sure didn't.
> 
> Let's hang out on [twitter](https://twitter.com/ponyoprince), I talk a lot about kpop and things that are decidedly Not Kpop.


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